


Triage

by august_the_real, pene



Category: Lie to Me (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 03:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/august_the_real/pseuds/august_the_real, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pene/pseuds/pene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her house was his mini-triage station.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triage

**Author's Note:**

> Triage  
> by pene and unwinding
> 
> Spoilers for Season 2, episode 11.

In his younger days his body was irrelevant. There were scrapes and breaks and things she can't even think of. Lightman hasn't changed in that he still has no regard for his personal safety but he's older now and she sees the way he shifts and winces after sitting still for too long. She can catalogue his body - well, some of it anyway. Broken nose: two weeks ago. Broken fingers: Belfast. Broken arm: South Tacoma. Black eye: tomorrow

Because she's still not used to an empty house, she's in her office skimming through case reports. She almost misses a sentence in one of Lightman's reports: I estimate I was waterboarded ten times before I could defuse the situation.

She puts down the report, horrified.

Sometimes she understands why Zoe left him. He sees through, or around, his responsibilities in order to be right. To break the case. To break himself. Her hands are shaking with anger and she thinks about all the nights he appeared at her doorway, holding down her door buzzer for ten, fifteen seconds, leaning against the wall because he could barely hold himself up.

And then somehow she started collecting things for mending him better. Bandages and suturing string. Antiseptic, heavy tranquilisers. Her house was his mini-triage station. He'd press her buzzer down for ten, fifteen seconds and she'd be there, to make it all better.

She phones him. "Why did you never tell me he waterboarded you?"

He doesn't answer right away and when he does he lies. "I'm with Emily." There's silence and he says, "still at the office then?"

"Just going through some paperwork, reading your reports."

She thinks about him, upside down, water rushing around his head. She looks down at the sentence again: I estimate I was waterboarded ten times before I could defuse the situation. They - no - he saved a girl's life that night but still she's angry at him and she doesn't want to explain why. She hangs up the phone without saying goodbye.

**

The thing with Cal is that there is no room for lies.

His lovers, his ex-wife; there was no room and no need for "you've changed" or "we've changed." Just a harmony of muscles moving across their face, his glance, his cough and a "right, then."

He tells people she is his blind spot and in a sense it may be true. She can read him just as well as he can her. She can hide herself just as well, too. She sighs when she thinks about this, about how absurd they are with each other.

**

He lopes into her office. "So what was that phone call about last night?" He's perching on the edge of her couch, arms crossed. He's defensive but genuinely curious.

She takes her time in responding, carefully meeting his gaze. "You didn't tell me what he did to you. I shouldn't have to read about it in a report."

"You told me you didn't want me coming round to your house anymore; you didn't want to keep stitching me up etc etc." He waves his hand; deep strokes through air.

"No, Cal, No. That's not what I said." She crosses the room. "Listen to me carefully." She puts her hands on either side of his face. "I do not want you to come to my house with a broken nose or full of broken glass because I do not want you to keep putting yourself in danger. But I know you will keep doing that and you know you'll still come over."

She holds her eye contact with him.

She begins, "If you were my patient-"

"-I was your patient."

She continues. "If you were my patient, I would tell you that your behaviour is reckless and self-destructive. I would remind you that you have a teenage daughter and a circle of people who depend on you and your well being."

He covers one of her hands with his. "And what would you say if I wasn't your patient?"

He's so close and his hand is warm over hers. "I would say you take too many risks and that it scares the hell out of me." She's unsettled by his touch, and tries to control herself so that she's not a flashing red neon sign.

There's silence and she pulls her hands away. She says, "We need to be more careful. You need to be more careful. I care about you, Cal. That's all."

He's at the door before he says, without turning around, "I am sorry, love. I was trained by MI5; it's the old habits that are the hardest to break."

**

There are certain, specific reasons why you should never work with your patients. When he pitched the idea of the Lightman Group to her, asked her to be his partner, she told him this. He said, "Yeah but I was never your patient, not really. More like colleagues. Or as collegiate as the Pentagon allows."

She acquiesced quickly, mostly because the project was fascinating. But there are certain, specific reasons why you should never work with your patient slash colleague. She knows, for example, that his mother killed herself when he was very young. That he gambled too much. That he loves his daughter. She knows things about him that are only told with the distance of a professional relationship and the promise of confidentiality.

There are very specific reasons why you should never work with your patients yet she chose, she chooses, to ignore them.

**

After Clara's departure, they hire waiters and caterers and throw a party for their staff. The Lightman Group: not in the red.

Gillian lifts her third glass of champagne from a waiter's tray and walks over to Cal, who's made significant inways into a bottle of scotch.

"Cheers." She says, knocking her glass against his.

"Cheers." He watches her drain her glass before doing the same with his scotch.

She says, "Well I never thought that it would go like this."

"What do you mean?" He asks.

"I didn't expect you'd be selling your body to put our payroll back in order."

"But then you also missed a nasty cocaine addiction and predilection for whores in your not-so-better half so I figure you'd be used to surprises." His response is so quick and brutal that she actually takes a step back in surprise.

"Oh shit." He says almost immediately after, reaches out to grab her but she's already walking away. By the time she gets to her office he's caught up with her. He sticks his foot out to stop her door closing and walks in.

She positions herself behind her desk - it feels like a safe space. She can hold it together so that she doesn't cry but she's three glasses of champagne down and so are her defences.

He closes the door behind him.

She says, "Please Cal, give me some room."

"Gillian, love, I'm sorry. It was a fucking stupid thing to say."

She's watched him use his knowledge like this - slamming Torres or Loker with the full force of his perception, taking revenge on Zoe. She's felt the ferocity of his insights but she learned to meet them face on and thought herself protected from him. She thought he was careful with her.

"Yes it was," she says, "And mean."

He watches her pack her briefcase and put on her scarf. "And mean. You're right-"

"-No, but the ridiculous part of it is that you're right. A deception expert who couldn't tell her husband was addicted to drugs and-" She stops, her hand on her forehead like she has a headache. "I can't, I can't go over this again."

He's at her side, his fingers lifting her hair so he can read her better. "I have to ask you to come back out there but-"

"-I can't go back out there." She says and he nods like it's the answer he was expecting. She picks up her briefcase and reaches for her coat.

He deliberately blocks the door. "I don't want you to leave like this. It's gonna be hard to get a cab out there in the rain. And it's dark."

She sighs; she's three glasses of champagne down and so are her defences

"What are you going to do? Stare my attacker to death. She says it as a joke but she's also conscious of the way his anger explodes out of him when she's threatened. She thinks that the last thing she needs to be is drunk in an emergency room with Cal and another damn broken nose. "Cal, it's fine, I'm old enough to take care of myself."

He's standing with his back against the door and there's no way she can get around him.

"Please move." She says.

"No."

"Please move." She says again. "I can't do this with you tonight. Please move."

He doesn't move and set down her coat and briefcase and puts her hand on his chest, carefully. "What do you want from me?" She asks.

He runs his hand through her hair, cups her face with his hand and says, "Don't make me beg, love."

She sighs, leans against him slightly. "Not here Cal, not in the office."

"You inviting me home, then?" She's surprised because he sounds nervous.

She says, quietly, "Have you ever really needed an invitation?"

**

They're in the back seat of a cab, flying through the streets. She looks at him. He's sitting still, looking out of the window.

She's never questioned his unsettling attention to her. Ordinarily when they're alone he's watching her. Now his face is profiled against the shifting street and the champagne is humming in her brain.

She says, unexpectedly, "When I had a private practice there were some patients who wouldn't talk about things that happened to them because they thought it could stay in the past. And sometimes time flattens out these things that happen; melds them with others and it makes the horrific seem normal. Or bearable, at least."

He shifts in his seat and looks back out the window. "I presume you're talking about the teenage sociopath who took a fancy to water."

She almost says something but then stops; she is trained to carry the weight of these silences.

"I don't need to talk about him with you."

"Are you talking about it with someone?

She laughs at the look he gives her.

"Okay." She says, her hand on his knee, kneading his trousers like a cat. "Okay."

There are things that are not normal. There are things that are not bearable. And she can never erase them for him, from him. They're part of the same parcel.

**

At home, she takes off her jacket and scarf and watches him do the same.

"I'm not your patient." He says, moving towards her.

"No, I know."

"Do you have a scotch?"

He follows her around the house, watching her collect glasses and a bottle of scotch and an open bottle of red. He watches her pour scotch for him, wine for her. Always watches. She picks up a glass and drinks, he does the same and then moves around the kitchen island that separates them. He's so close; he's scotch and stale cigarettes. He's the choice she's never made.

She reaches up to take his hand but only catches two fingers.

She considers herself brave with words. She means the things she says, is partial to the clarity in the simplest of phrases.

"Come to bed," she says, pulling him down the hallway.

 

**


End file.
